Category: No Meat

I have discovered something terrible. It turns out that I really have no choice but to eat dairy free.

Dairy free.

No Parmesan for me, no Pecorino, no Mozzarella, no cheesecake. I mean.. do I even have to go on? It’s a health thing and it’s not fixable, so here I go. I have been trying to get used to it for a couple of weeks now. I am quite happy to drink coffee with soymilk, use margarine on bread etc., but saying goodbye forever to cheese is proving the hardest. I do come up with different new things to eat to make things better and I realised that when going out, it is good to go to a Chinese restaurant or for sushi as these are the places where avoiding milk is the easiest.

Well, why not have some mushrooms then? At least they are dairy free.

I had a lot of leftover mushrooms and decided to make a bread spread with them. There are so many recipes out there with cream cheese, butter etc. Needless to say, I had to come up with my own version and I think it is delicious. It feels very creamy in your mouth and it is, to be honest, quite a fancy topping for your bread.

This is one of my favourite things to eat in the world. I make a risotto two, three times a month and I always enjoy both cooking and eating it. I really like the creamy arborio rice and if you decide to make this dish, please use arborio and not jasmin or any other rice variety. Arborio is the one to use, because it will give you this creamy, starchy texture.

Ingredients:

2 Tbsp butter

1 Tbsp olive oil

1/2 onion

2 cloves garlic

1 stalk celery

1 cup broccoli, divided into small florets

1 1/3 cup arborio rice

2 cups chicken stock

1 cup dry white wine

1/2 cup grated parmesan

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

salt & pepper

Place butter and oil in a pan. Set the heat to medium. Mince the onion and garlic and add to the pan. Chop celery into very tiny pieces and add to the pan.

Divide broccoli into small florets and add to the pan. Stir and add dry arborio rice. Let it fry until you see that it is slowly becoming translucent.

Add wine, stir and cook until the wine has been absorbed. Add chicken stock and let cook for another 10 minutes or so. Keep an eye on the dish and if you see that it has absorbed all of the liquid but the rice is still too hard to eat, add more stock or even hot water if you have no more stock.

Add salt, pepper, nutmeg and cayenne pepper. Once the rice is soft enough to eat add parmesan, stir, and serve.

Winter is getting closer and everybody starts talking about kale and putting it in recipes, right? They have a point, since kale is in season now and it is the least bitter when grown in cold temperatures.

And, as I am a bit of a nerd when it comes to nutrition, I went ahead and checked that kale has some amazing amounts of vitamin K, A and C. If you make this soup and eat it and then want to feel extra, especially good about doing it, have a look at this link. It explains a lot about the benefits of kale. World’s Healthiest Foods – Kale

The beans aren’t just a filler either, I used lima beans and found some awesome info about them on that website. Have a look for some info on whatever beans you use.

This is a recipe for a hearty, warming autumn soup. Even though it does not contain meat, it leaves your belly satisfied and full.

This amount serves 4.

Ingredients:

2 Tbsp olive oil

1 onion, finely diced (I use a food processor)

2 cloves of garlic, minced

3 potatoes, peeled and cubed

1 carrot, cut lengthwise and then chopped

1 vegetable stock cube

2 celery stalks, chopped

1 tsp Herbes de Provence

1 tsp marjoram (use oregano if you have no marjoram)

1/2 tsp salt

1 can white beans (lima/haricot/navy, whatever is easiest to get)

2 cups kale, finely chopped

1 1/2 liter water form the kettle

salt & pepper to taste

In a pot, heat the olive oil and add onion and garlic. Let cook for a couple of minutes until the onions soften.

Add the cubed potatoes and carrots. Stir to coat with oil and continue cooking for another 5 minutes.

Pour the water in and follow with celery, herbs and bring into a rolling boil. Cook for 15 minutes or until the potatoes are almost ready.

Add kale and drained and rinsed beans and cook for 5 more minutes, just enough for all the flavours to blend.

Check the taste and add more salt if needed. Season with freshly ground pepper.

I come from Poland, where when I was growing up, Halloween was heard of but certainly not celebrated. I am just that old. And I remember very well, when I first saw Halloween in Chicago, what a shock that was, all these pumpkins and skeletons out on people’s lawns seemed such overkill. Awesome overkill, I must add. And I remember as well, my first Halloween in Ireland, when a coworker showed up in a full pirate costume to his office job. I barely knew what to say, that’s how surprised I was. There were more people showing up dressed up that day and some years later I was happily dressing up with them too. I have absolutely nothing against Halloween. It’s an awesome, happy holiday.

But I am just totally inexperienced in it, and I often feel like I don’t understand it. So whenever I try to do something for Halloween, I feel like I totally don’t know what I am doing. For this year’s Halloween post, I wanted to make muffins with red cream cheese filling. It was supposed to look like blood. Blood in muffins, I don’t know. Is that a good idea? Or not at all?

So I started experimenting and whatever I added to cream cheese, it came up cute, pastel pink colour, which would be great for a 4 year old girl’s cake or something. Not the colour of blood, certainly. I tried red food colouring, until I ran out of it, I tried cherry juice, red currant juice. Forget it, I ended up with cutsie pink muffins.

And that was my best idea anyway…

So I decided that I should stop pretending that I know anything about Halloween and trying to make something I don’t know how to make. This is too much BS. So instead, you’re getting this recipe: banana pancakes. They are sweet, delicious, they taste like bananas and you can eat them on all days of the year, Halloween or not.

Ingredients:

3 ripe bananas

4 eggs

1/4 cup flour

icing sugar for decoration

1 Tbsp oil or butter for frying

Peel bananas and mash them in a bowl until more or less smooth. Add eggs and flour and whisk until the mixture is uniform.

Heat the butter in a pan and pour the dough in small portions. These pancakes are best when they are not too big and not too thick. Small pancakes are easy to flip and stay in one piece much easier.

Pickle soup is a classic in Poland and if you google it, you will find plenty of recipes and explanations in English. It’s my favourite soup, with an interesting, sour flavour. Do try it and don’t be put off by the idea. It’s delicious! This is one of those soups that leaves you warm, satisfied and feeling amazing.

Regarding the pickles to use for this recipe, you will need to find pickles which have no vinegar in the jar. Here in Norway, I am able to find them in imported food shops, where they are selling a lot of Turkish and Middle-Eastern foods. I can see a lot of recipes out there not telling readers this detail and I learnt the hard way. The vinegar pickles won’t lose their vinegary madness while in the soup and you’ll end up eating heated vinegar – not great!

This recipe yields 4 yummy portions

Ingredients:

4 potatoes

2 carrots

1 parsnip

1 small piece of celeriac

1/2 cup single cream

6 pickles, processed or grated into a pulp

2 Tbsp butter

1 Tbsp tomato paste

to season:

1/2 tsp sweet paprika

1/2 tsp dried parsley leaf

1/2 tsp black ground pepper

salt to taste

Peel and cube potatoes and place in a saucepan. Add 1 1/2l (3 pints) water and put on medium heat.

Peel and dice carrots, parsnip and celeriac and add to potatoes. Bring to boil and continue cooking until soft.

While these are cooking, add paprika, parsley, ground pepper and salt.

In a frying pan, melt the butter and once hot, add pickles and fry until slightly thicker.

Once you check the soup and you are sure that the potatoes and other veggies are soft enough to eat, add the pickles and tomato paste, and stir.

Now that the summer is in full swing beautiful vegetables like peppers, aubergines and courgettes are in season. They won’t stay that way forever but you can preserve their summer goodness in jars and keep it for these winter months. Of course you can just preserve vegetables on their own but you can also save yourself cooking time later by producing a delightful sweet and sour sauce and use it on rice or rice and chicken in the winter.

Ingredients:

5 bell peppers

3 courgettes

1 small aubergine

1 onion

1 cup tomato puree

1 Tbsp dried oregano

2 Tbsp dried paprika

1 tsp cayenne pepper

1 Tbsp salt

1/3 cup vinegar

1/3 cup water

1 cup sugar

Cube the vegetables into small 1cm pieces. Place in a bowl, add salt, stir and set in the fridge overnight.

On the next day put the vegetables in a colander or sieve and let the juices drain. You will not be using the juices.

Place the vegetables in a pot and start cooking them. Cook for 20 minutes and in the meantime put sugar, water and vinegar in a separate pot, stir and heat until sugar has dissolved.

Add all the spices and tomato puree to the veggies, follow with the vinegar mixture. Mix everything and let it continue to cook while you’re prepping the jars.

Preheat your oven to 100C/210F and put four 0.5l/pint jars in the oven without lids for 10 minutes. I cannot guarantee that this mixture will yield exactly 2l/4pints so it might be a good idea to add another, smaller jar or be prepared to eat the remaining sauce within the next couple of days. Take the lids, place in a bowl and cover them with hot water from the kettle.

I use jars that I have kept after pickles, jams etc., and I don’t own any fancy canning equipment so this recipe is not calling for any.

When the jars are ready take them out and using kitchen mittens spoon the boiling hot sauce into hot jars and tightly close the lids.

Place the jars on the counter. In an hour or so you will hear popping sounds as the lids will start sealing. All of them should be sealed and you can check by pressing on the middle of the lid to see if it is concave.

You can keep sealed jars in the pantry until you’re ready to eat the sauce in the autumn or winter.

And smile because you’re done and you have some delicious food for the cold months! 😀

I came up with this recipe when away on holiday. I had a jar of mayo in the fridge and knew I had to use it before the holiday was over as bringing it on the plane seemed too crazy. These muffins are really nice and moist inside and are still delicious the next day, so do try them!

Ingredients:

2 eggs

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1 3/4 cup all purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup liquid reserved from the can of green peas

3 Tbsp green peas

4 mushrooms, halved and sliced

2 slices of cheese, cut into 6 pieces each to use as topping

1/2 tsp oregano

a pinch of black pepper

a pinch of dried nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F.

Prepare a 12 hole muffin tray.

In a bowl mix eggs, mayonnaise, pepper, nutmeg and oregano.

In a separate container mix flour with salt and baking powder.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ones, add milk and the pea liquid and stir until just blended.